The group of hunters all gathered around Punishe to form a turtle defense.

They raised their hands in defiance and aggression.

Egosum pulled the injured beastmen into his mud pond to fully take them out of the fight. The feeling of panic from the conscious ones was disheartening but necessary.

He could feel the thump of all of their hearts traveling through his Qi, letting him know the entombed men were still alive. His sense of touch was heightened to the extreme as he pushed and pulled the mud below him. The pond bounced up and down with each flex of his dao.

A large burst of Qi flew out of him and into the ground around him. His reserves were finally beginning to deplete at a noticeable rate when the investment finally paid off.

They each responded in kind to the call and sent a wave of sludge forward.

The bestmen all turned to retreat from the encroaching disaster.

It was only waist height, but it was dense with rock and soil. The force of it went slamming into a few of the stranglers, dragging them into the trap like tentacles pulling them in. Once the wave began to fall under its own mass, it pulled back inwards.

A number of the hunters turned to help their fellow men when Punishe shouted again.

“Leave them! Get to safety!” They grit their teeth and followed after their leader.

Their numbers had declined to only a few more than a dozen. A path to victory was finally in sight.

Egosum hopped ahead and tightened his grasp on the entombed beastmen as a fantastical sight stole his attention. The group of hunters finally stopped retreating when one of them caught sight of the human bits.

The torsos, heads, legs, and arms came together under all of their views. The mass of flesh pulled at each other to turn more and more monstrous with each second. The mindless and chaotic struggle proved fruitful as each moment that passed the bewildered onlooker by, the flesh took on a more recognizable shape.

Hands pulled themselves into position while legs stood up to support the mass of meat they struggled to hold up. The wobbling from the movements finally left as the torso of the newly formed beast formed itself into a recognizable shape.

Egosum was sure that if the scar tissue in his back was still sensitive, it would have been crawling at the sight.

“Is that pile of scraps turning into a ruminating sloth?” The disbelief in the hunters' voice echoed in all of the other beastmen as they shouted similar phrases of confusion.

The mass of flesh stood at its full height. Its head was a bundle of wriggling twitching skulls with their hair caked in their own blood. The arms were made of multiple limbs grasping onto each other with a forearm acting as each claw. The legs were squished and slashed masses of muscle scraped together from indistinguishable scraps of meat with whole feet as toes.

The sight was enough to instill discomfort in Egosum who knew it was on his side and undoubtedly cemented terror into all of the beastmen’s hearts.

Punishe looked all around him before making his decision.

“You, you, and you keep the frog back. Everyone else, kill that thing.” He pointed around before the larger group launched their charge of the mass of flesh.

Egosum felt the first signs of fatigue setting into his muscles for the first time ever. He had soreness from injuries and pain, but never true tiredness.

His Qi had tanked with the use of his wave and the work he put in to ensure the trapped hunters didn’t get out if he ran out of Qi.

He watched on as the men clashed with the beast.

The sheer number difference did wonders to eliminate quick losses as they followed similar tactics to the bird they had witnessed them combat days prior.

Instead of the grappling fights they had with the humans, they bobbed and weaved in and out of the monster’s range while carving deep gashes and hard punches.

He turned to the three hunters assigned to him and watched them closely. The changes that Punishe had forced on them with his low call had remained but put a number on their endurance as they struggled to watch their breath while standing still.

The struggle the others must have been going through to actively fight that flesh golem would have to have been immense.

Another howl left the leader. The beastmen lurched slightly at the noise as they lost the humanoid posture and took on more feral looks. They hunched over and took riskier attacks on the golem with more opportunity for lasting damage but also more opportunity to be counterattacked.

The brawl was going well as only a few of them were taken out by the quick grabs by the sloth. The men it grabbed were quickly choked unconscious and tossed into the woods at its back. The efficiency was commendable, but the outlook became increasingly bleak for Egosum and his friends.

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Cinera must have fled due to running out of her mana and the parasites were actually losing ground despite the near-unlimited stamina they had shown.

Egosum hopped out of his mud and confronted the hunched-over beastmen. They were clearly in worse shape than him, but the memory of fresh blood still sat in his mind. The rumbles from the golem fight accented his first lunge at them perfectly as he launched into the closest beastman’s chest.

He was knocked off his feet as the toad grabbed onto the hunter's fur and torn clothes with his dao-enhanced hands.

His Qi core thrummed to life as he focused on defense while his hands climbed higher and higher on his body.

The first signs of counterattack raked across his back to no avail as his recent epiphany helped him truly utilize the qi dissipated in his body rather than let it naturally infuse him.

His warty brown hands finally made their way to the hunter's neck. He used the leverage to throw his full weight into a hard headbutt. The force jiggled the beastman’s brain, sending him reeling to the ground with his hands curling inwards on reflex.

The other hunters didn’t waste the opportunity and stabbed at him with straightened claws.

The piercing power of their spear-like blows managed to break through his newly enhanced skin. They pulled back from the newly created wounds and rained as many attacks down on him as they could before he could react.

Egosum finally jumped forward to take some distance. His muscles ached even more as the dull sense of pain became more and more noticeable.

He looked at the golem fight and saw the fleshy beast had been reduced to smaller chunks once again. The pink worms fell from the flesh as their energy was fully used up.

A loud cracking noise stole the entire clearing's attention as another contend became known. Treetops in the distance shook and fell as some wild beast crashed into the camp.

“An actually ruminating sloth?! What the fuck is this shit?!” Punishe’s harsh voice screams out in frustration.

Egosum watched on with his enhanced sight. The fluorescent pink worms slid around the sloth’s flesh with untapped vigor. He fought back the desire to taunt the pack leader until the hunters in front of him lashed out with their hands.

It was plainly visible they wanted to end it quickly. They swiped in wide arcing paths to try and force him to put up his guard. He knew he needed to hold out as long as possible. His Qi was still circulating, and he could get out of the small fight and retreat to come back another day, then they would ultimately win the war if this battle was a lost cause.

Punishe unleashed a deeper and much more guttural howl that didn’t seem to have any effect of the other hunters. In turn, the man himself began to twist and contort. His muscles bulged and his jaw began to elongate into that of a wolf's. His torso became more reminiscent of a wolf and, by the time he stopped transforming, he had turned into a less impressive but ultimately terrifying copy of Thunkar in his war beast form.

“Bullshit.” The singular quiet word fell from Egosum’s mouth as he watched the change take place before his eyes. Where Thunkar would have been similarly sized to the sloth, Punishe was slightly smaller than the titan.

The parasite-ridden sloth tore through the ranks of the hunters, leaving the group in shambles as it rushed for Punishe.

It took savage blows as charged him from the underlings but eventually clashed with him.

Shockwaves echoed across the camp as they slammed into each other.

Long claws scraped along each other as they batted away with their arms. Hunters chased after the beast and nipped at its heels with their hooked hands.

Blood pooled around the clearing as the meat golem and sloth leaked all over the place.

He turned back to his own fight. It was plainly obvious that he needed to leave soon. Their chance to kill that bastard was gone. He had overused his Qi and underutilized his allies.

First, he had to incapacitate the two beastmen in front of him. His dao-enhanced grip scooped at the soul, liquifying it in the process. He flung it towards the hunters’ faces as he followed after it with a lung.

They raised their guard to block the projectile and fell straight into his trap. Egosum gripped his fist tight as he connected with the beastman’s jaw.

His body fell back onto the ground with the toad on his chest.

He tried to fight back as he was pushed deep into the soil with his legs flailing above ground.

A painful kick sent him tumbling off as the other hunter defended his friend.

It was now just one on one. The hunter’s eyes darted side to side for some sign of salvation before landing on something.

They circled each other for one turn when Egosum caught sight of what the hunter had focused on.

The battle between the pseudo warbeast Punishe and the parasite sloth was nearing its end. The combined might of him and his lackeys had turned the beast into shreds within moments. The vestiges of struggle were plainly visible in the gashed corpse of the beast.

The vigor in its body had been beaten clean out of it as they did everything they could to disable it. Only six of the beastmen were still up and in fighting shape when the blood-soaked body fell to the floor like a puppet with no strings.

Their leader had a few gashes on his body as he panted with harsh breaths. The fight had done a number on him with the size difference and disregard the host had for its life.

The sacrifice wouldn’t be for nothing even if Egosum managed to retreat. They had wounded the man and incapacitated almost all of the hunters. They would be stuck digging out their friend for the next few days if they were up for the difficult task.

‘I hope I gave them enough air. That would be awkward.’ His thoughts raced as the blood-red eyes of their leader focused in on him.

“Shit.”

“And so it’s just the frog. Abandoned…. by his friends and without his cohort of human… attackers. That necromantic magic you cast on them doesn’t matter once we chop them into enough pieces. Heheh-”

He took large and labored breaths before coughing out a splatter of blood. The pain was obvious even through the blanket of smug hatred that was always present.

“What did I say about frog legs before? Whatever. I think I have a pretty good idea about how we will deal with you. Burning you alive seems like the best way. All of you, get him.” The hunters that had struggled through the sloth fight left his side and began to walk ominously toward him.

All of them froze as the sounds of a large beast rushing through the forest caught their attention.

“Oh, fuck you! Again?” Punishe prepared for the beast to come flying out of the underbrush with his hands extended in a viscous hooked position when it finally flew through.

His face went pale as he got a clear look at the attacker.

“Shit.”

‘Copycat.’